Housing complex a step up for Hope

Updated 1:23 am, Saturday, November 17, 2012

The elevator wasn't working.

So Laurence C. Williams, homeless for decades, lugged all of his belongings up four flights of stairs on Friday to his new home at the Terraces at Haven for Hope. The affordable housing complex opened this month across from the sprawling campus for the homeless.

“Look how high I am,” Williams, 42, said outside his apartment, panting from the exertion. “Thank you, Lord.”

Altogether, his story is extraordinary. Too often, emerging from homelessness is an arduous task.

This inertia is felt on the campus itself, where the city is ending a housing assistance program that helps fund rooms for Haven members. Next month, Haven will operate its own program “due to difficulties encountered with the current program structure,” according to city records.

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“Concerns included members remaining too long on the campus, the inability to enforce rules including a zero tolerance policy, the lengthy eviction process for nonpaying or noncompliant residents, and the under-utilization of rooms due to slow turnover.”

Williams, then, has become a role model.

“Once people see I made it, they can (do) the same,” he said. “You have to love yourself first.”

His journey has been painful.

At 17, Williams dropped out of school and left home. For years, he worked as a dishwasher and panhandled for cash.

“I never had a permanent place to stay,” he said. “For every check I got, I'd hit up the motel rooms.”

Bipolar, he also became addicted to crack. When Ron Brown found him, Williams was sleeping on Broadway and uneasy about coming to the campus, which opened in 2010.

“It was something else getting him to come on,” says Brown, the courtyard liaison at Haven.

At 340 pounds and 6-foot-3, , Williams was intimidating.

“I could melt steel,” he said. “I wouldn't talk to anybody at all.”

But the toughness was only a shell, the bitterness only distrust. Today, Williams is grateful and garrulous. He wants to continue working at intake, helping new members settle into the campus.

She says the closeness of the Terraces to the campus is critical for Williams, who has tried moving out before but couldn't handle the transition. The new housing complex has 140 units and is open to anyone.

On the Haven campus, Williams was living in a single room occupancy unit, or SRO — a 10-by-10 room with concrete floors.

His new apartment is spacious and carpeted with a view of a courtyard. He no longer obeys a curfew or submits to searches when he comes home.

“It's night and day,” Williams said, standing in his living room, eager to celebrate. “I'm going to get me a candy bar. I'm a chocoholic.”